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WASHINGTON D.C. -- Jason Palmer has some pretty straightforwardadvice for executives looking to derive more value from technology:be a contrarian. "Always challenge what you think will work, always challenge whatyou have done," says Palmer, president of SmartDrive Systems, whichoffers businesses a service for improving fleet safety and fuelconsumption. "This allows you to think outside the box and identifyopportunities that you wouldn't have expected," says Palmer, whosecompany was one of dozens recognized at the Computerworld Honors Program held here Monday at the historic Andrew W. Mellon auditorium. The Honors Program has been held for the last 24 years andrecognizes organizations that use information technologies ininnovative ways to promote public welfare. Several organizations received Achievement Awards at the event including DataDyne for developing a free datacollection tool for nonprofits and humanitarian organizations;Curriki for creating an online community that makes educationalmaterials available for free to students and educators around theworld; OhioHealth for a mobile application that delivers real-timehealthcare information to patients via their smartphones; and theCommonwealth of Pennsylvania for developing an innovative facialrecognition tool for fighting crime. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who received the Morgan StanleyLeadership Award for Global Commerce at the event, stressed theimportance of entrepreneurial thinking in a fast changing word.Companies that want to create jobs and make a difference to societywill increasingly need to think, behave and take risks likeentrepreneurs do, he said. It's advice that resonated with Palmer and several others at theevent. "Over 20 years and six separate startups I have found that it iscritical in order to advance that you have to look at the changingmarket dynamics and look at how current processes can be improvedwith technology," Palmer said. As an example, he pointed to SmartDrive's research around fleetsafety. "Traditionally in commercial safety, much of the dataregarding the cause of collisions was done through accidentreconstruction. This provided limited insight into the realbehaviors that lead to collisions," he said. So instead, the company offers customers an event recording systemthat combines video, audio and vehicle data. The system is designedto give fleet managers a much more detailed view than previouslyavailable, of everything that happened inside and in front of avehicle, before during and after a collision, or other safetyevent. "From this process we have been able to identify that distracteddriving behavior is actually the leading cause of fundamentaldriving errors like unsafe lane changes, running stop signs, andspeeding," Palmer said. SmartDrive has also done several studies on fuel consumption anddiscovered that contrary to common perception, its not vehicleidling that wastes the most fuel but hard accelerations, hardbraking and hard turns. "Through continuous testing andoptimization the last two years we have found that [companies] cansave as much as 29% of fuel by focusing on [these] specific drivingskills," he said. Innovative and entrepreneurial approaches are critical duringchallenging economic times said Shyam Desigan, the chief financialofficer at Volunteers of America Chesapeake. The non-profitorganization was recognized at the event for its work on building apredictive analytics capability for identifying new serviceopportunities. "With compressing margins and changing customer landscape the onlyway for organizations to survive and thrive is be innovative andentrepreneurial," Desigan said. "When people say 'no' or 'can't bedone on this budget' I have looked at creative ways which includesleveraging cloud computing and open source to drive incrementalchange." Until recently, few CIOs would be fired for selecting companiessuch as an IBM or a Cisco as their technology partners, he said."With the changing times there has been a paradigm shift in thisthinking. CFOs like myself are increasingly looking for value,"Designan said. Lou August, a global co-leader of technology development at WorldVision International, a faith-based relief, development, andadvocacy organization based in Canada that was recognized at theevent for a developing an innovative mobile technology for trackingaid distribution. August describes a lot of the work that he and his teammates do asentrepreneurial in nature, whether it is creatingtechnology-enabled programs that have never been done before, orbuilding technology-enabled social ventures. "As the founder and owner of a technology company for 20 years, Ibelieve entrepreneurial skills are essential for an IT leader,"August said. But equally vital is a passion for the job and awillingness to work extremely hard towards a specific goal, hesaid. "This is a big reason why training people in entrepreneurshipor guiding entrepreneurs to innovate in areas they are notpassionate about often rarely works." Another litmus test for IT leaders is their wiliness to take risks,and their willingness to put their careers on the line for takingsuch risks. "This willingness is also tied to ones passion.Achieving a vision one is passionate about is always more valuablethan one's career itself," August said. Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financialservices security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumaron Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is . See more by Jaikumar Vijayan on Computerworld.com. Read more about it leadership in Computerworld's IT Leadership Topic Center. I am an expert from sublimated-sportswear.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Sports Compression Clothing , Craft Running Clothing Manufacturer, Tracksuits Sportswear,and more.
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